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Gentrification, Displacement and Democratisation of Urban Space

There's been a bit of chatter lately, particularly in the UK about gentrification. Last month, the Guardian stated that "gentrification is now the predominant form of neighborhood development" with affordable housing on the decline and displacement going up and up.

There's also been some research conducted here in Australia by AHURI (Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute), examining the impacts of gentrification in Melbourne and Sydney. According to the study:

This includes renters and home-owners, though interestingly, the AHURI study showed that renters were more like to move to a suburb nearby, whereas home-owners were just as likely to move to city fringe areas or regional cities further afield.

The study notes that the perceived benefit of gentrification (the 'improvement' of the neighbourhood) is actually false.

The ‘gain’ of higher income households to one political jurisdiction, thought
of in ‘global’ terms, may be cancelled out by the migration of lower-income displaces
to others. Social problems are thereby evacuated through the 'improvement' of
neighbourhoods and are thereby often seen as evidence that gentrification has
positive impacts on social problems when in fact the net gain to the wider system may
be close to nil and take no cogniscance of the social and psychological costs of
displacement.

The Guardian article aligns with the AHURI report, debunking the 'trickle down benefit' of gentrification. However, interestingly, the article states that the worst myth regarding gentrification is that nothing much can be done about it. Things like more and better public housing, rent control and regulation, community control of neighbourhood space, expanding social welfare, strengthening unions and empowering social movements could all contribute to addressing displacement. According to the article:

Even today, it's not too late to unforeclose urban politics and build an alternative to the city of gentrification and inequality. The opposite of gentrification isn't urban decay; it's the democratization of urban space.